MAY 31, 2015
Taming the Tongue: Sticks and Stones
James 3:5-12
It’s my privilege to be able to fill in this morning. My name is Roger Dawson and I am the Associate Pastor and Youth Pastor here at Vanscikle Baptist Church. We’re going to have a great time this morning.
Prayer.
If you have your Bible, then I am going to ask you to turn to the Book of James; which is where we are gonna be in a few moments.
I don’t know if you’ve seen this before or not, but I’ve heard that “Every real man’s tool kit needs three tools: a hammer, WD-40, and duct tape.” Anything can be fixed with those things. If you can’t fix it with one of those 3 things, then you’re not a “real” man.
That got me to thinking about some other expressions I’ve seen about Duct Tape. One of them was, “If you can’t fix it with Duct Tape, then it ain’t broke.” Another one, “If you can’t fix it with duct tape, then use more duct tape.” One last one that I came across, which is appropriate for our message today, says, “Silence is golden, but Duct Tape is silver.”
I’m not sure if you’ve spent much time out on the playground, but it doesn’t take long watching kids play and interact with each other, before you get to see in a visual display the truth about the sin nature. As you watch kids, it doesn’t take long before they start getting into arguments and spats. At times, kids will be on the merry-go-round, and a little girl will come up to a boy whose playing there and tell him that she likes him, and next thing you know, the boy is pushing the girl to the ground — that’s his way of telling her that he likes her too.
As funny (or sad) as that may be, it reveals a truth that there is in deed something wrong with our hearts as human beings. We need to recognize that today.
On the playground is usually the place where we first here the phrase: “Sticks and stones will brake your bones, but words will never hurt you.” That is a kid’s way (or even our way) of saying I’m not gonna let your words have power over me. The truth is that those words can be very powerful in our lives. So, this morning I wanted to share a message with you that related to our words and brings us to our topic today: Taming the Tongue. I was talking with a few people before service who asked what I would be speaking on today, and when I told them, they said they might be skipping out on the message today.
This is something we can all learn from and be challenged in.
James 3:5-12
Before we get there, let me give you just a little bit of context. The writer (James) is encouraging the church and talking to them about different things. One of the interesting things is that the outline in the book of James very closely follows Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. This speaks in part to the power that Jesus’ own words from the Sermon on the Mount had on James. Very interesting to think about as you read through the Book of James.
In chapter 3, James is encouraging the church… trying to get them to understand just how powerful a person’s words and their tongue can be. To expound on this he uses two illustrations to explain this: he talks about a bit in a horses mouth; how something so small can be used to control a massive animal. In the same way, on a huge ship, a small rudder is used to steer such a large vessel. Our tongue is the same way–even though it is small, it has a huge and powerful effect in our lives. James begins to explain this in Chapter 3, verse 5.
I want you to hear the big and important truths that james is talking about in this passage. He says even though the tongue is very small, it is very powerful in its nature. But not only that, maybe if you struggle with saying the right things and doing the right things, or maybe you find yourself around some individuals you wish were here today to hear this message, and you think back to that saying about duct tape: silence is golden, but duct tape is silver … and you’re wishing you had some duct tape for some individuals… or perhaps its you yourself that needs the duct tape.
The reason that this is so hard for us is because of the nature of the tongue AND more so what is in our hearts. So James encourages the church to wake up to this fact.
Throughout scripture you see some great examples of people who have done a great job in subduing their tongues.